Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Cavern - a view from 1964

Found in Arrows 87 (Summer 1964, edited by Roger Ebbatson) this amusing piece about 'Beat Music.' The magazine was produced by Sheffield University Union and had poems articles, graphics etc., This article was by Peter Roche a poet who was affiliated with the Liverpool Scene. He edited a 1960s anthology Love, Love, Love (The New Love Poetry) and is to be found in various poetry collections and anthologies. He was also a friend of John Peel and Cream lyricist Pete Brown.The article shows how, at the time, The Cavern (the club where the Beatles played and were discovered) was not universally loved...

Beat City by Peter RocheLet me tell you all a fairy story. Once upon a time, in a city far away across the hills to the west, there was an old warehouse, in an alley off a side street. And underneath this warehouse was a cellar, where the local groups used to play their music far into the night. And people who lived on the banks of the river used to go to this cellar, because it was somewhere to go when the pubs had kicked out and you were half cut and there was nowhere else to go, and anyway there was a fair old chance of picking up a judy there. And everyone was fairly happy, minding their own business and having the occasional punch-up.

Until one day the place became famous, and people came from miles around just to look at it (although there was nothing much worth seeing), and they put a big sign up outside telling everybody what it was called (as if we hadn't known its name for years), and they raised the price of admission. So the people who lived on the banks of the river said sod this for a lark, it's cheaper at the Iron Door or the Mardi or the Sink, and the groups are better, and any what you don't get a lot of bloody foreigners gawping at you as though you were in a bloody zoo or something. So they all stopped going there.And that's why it's no good asking me what the Cavern's like these days, because I haven't been near the place for a year and a half; you'll just have to believe what the glossy weeklies tell you: "The people of Bootle are shy, retiring… the Cavern is a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of town". And for my next trick I will die laughing. Or you could always go and see the place for yourself, of course, but don't blame me it you're disappointed. As I say, the locals don't go there much anymore, and they've even got Southern groups playing there now, as if the place hadn't gone down the nick enough as it was. Of course, if you happen to like the Dave Clark Five… as a mate of mine once said, I wonder how much they pay the bloke that winds them up? According to our kid, who went there about a month back, they've got this character there called Bob Wooler, who introduces the groups and claims to have personally discovered the Beatles. Will all those who personally discovered the Beatles kindly form a line reaching from Lewis's corner to the Pier Head? Thank you, and get lost…Full of bloody comedians, Liverpool. And groups. There were over three hundred and fifty, last time someone took the trouble to count…They form a sort of shifting population. When the Merseybeats changed their bass guitarist a while back, the Mirror reported it as though it was a national disaster. But the groups change members and equipment faster than they change their socks. Look at the classifieds in 'Mersey Beat':Experienced rhythm and blues signer wishes to join professional group.For sale: Fender Stratocaster, good condition.Good L/R guitarist (own equip) seeks to join R & B group.And so on, for a couple of columns. The signs are there alright; if you started in five years ago with Rock, three chords and three quid guitar and hang around for a couple of years while they changed the name to R & B, chances are that today you're a good L/R guitarist (own equip) with a single in the charts and the judies tearing their hair out (or yours) at the Iron Door, the Rumblin Tum, the Mardi Gras. Chances are. The again, you might be knocking off a cool thirty bob a night, playing the fringe clubs, waiting for the Big Break to come along…Liverpool isn't the place where the Big Beat was born; it's the place where it never died out. When Haley faded into obscurity and Presley switched labels and started recording rubbish, when Tin Pan Alley's A & R boys started peddling watered-down Rock by way of such rugged individualists as Richard, Fury, Steele Faith (Hope? Charity?), the Merseyside groups went right on playing Rock 'n' Roll. Oh alright, so now they call it Rhythm 'n' Blues, but basically it's early Rock. Look at some of the titles - not so much the ones they put on record, but the ones they sings in the clubs - 'Lucille', 'Roll Over Beethoven', 'Good Golly Miss Molly', 'Monkey Business', 'Ready Teddy', 'Memphis': the old Chuck Berry, Little Richard numbers. This current reawakening of interest in the Big Beat is the best thing since the sliced loaf as far as the groups are concerned, but what made it so popular again all of a sudden? Don't ask me; when you've lived in the middle of something for a few years it's difficult to look at it objectively. Perhaps if you go to Liverpool yourself you might find the answer somewhere among the grimy buildings and the narrow back entries, the ferryboats on the river and the drunks signing on the last bus home, the dockside pubs and the dance-hall punch-ups, the ten Woodies and the draught Guinness (More pubs than mugs, an' there's plenty of those), the crowds on the terraces at Anfield or Goodison, the wide boys in the market on a Wednesday - "This is all knock-off stuff, y'know; this carpet was originally intended for the Japanese Ambassador to Bootle, but a mate of ours nicked it. Now am not asking' five quid…" Full of bloody comedians, Liverpool. And groups, of course.

Oh, and if you do find the answer, you might let me know. I could use a couple of quid, y'know worra I mean like?

... World Brain of H.G. Wells, an olla podrida, a rag bag of information, trivia and data. The conception of a sublime, leisured future. A hotch potch, a mélange, a farrago, a salmagundi.. Knowledge is power. Truth is beauty. Need to know this (and much more) on earth. A coming world of creation and idleness where time is spent in pursuit of knowledge and robots empty the waste paper basket. A dream of no work, all play and jack not a dull boy any more.

The oddest collection, passing strange, a saga, a fantasy, a dream…enter Captain Cuttle and the pedant Casaubon (a maligned man, Madam George). Keeping some sort of record with factoids, footnotes, ephemera, factbooks and discoveries preserved. An information bank, an interest bearing investment. An index of all knowledge, no less, laid out in the lost monograph- A proposal for an information sharing galaxy.

An amazing expanding archive, way beyond the algorithmic dream, post Mass Observation, many beautiful things no longer lost, bringing forth the mind of God, the all seeing eye - the library of Babel, Alexandria, far Antioch and the lost library of Zembla, the loot of cities. Universal access to all knowledge [A2K]. A vanished world recaptured. Notes and Queries honoured: New Encyclopaedists [Encyc2]. Nothing lost or forgotten. Time spent in research, curiosity and scholarship (the daring to be dull) the Renaissance ideal, the Victorian vicarage - just 4 hours a week of money yielding work. By Timothy! The answer is written on the wind, on the wall of the world. So much to know. Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus, much glory to Aaron Swartz... "He had a tale to tell." Madam, I'm Adam. Exit, pursued by a bear.

Jotcloud 101

"…new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical then tragical matters.To-day we hear of new Lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps &c... [Robert Burton]

What's the big idea?

Q. Where did the idea of jot101 and 'jotting' come from?

A. We knew a collector of esoterica who wrote notes and comments about his reading which he called his 'jottings.' It came from there. The information is not necessarily amusing, interesting, quirky or strange - but a 'jot' is generally new and original information or an advance on existing facts.

Q. So you would like jot101 to be a place where people archive research and notes from their readings?

A. Yes, but also information that they have come across in their work, in travel, from friends, in anecdote, in their family and in old books, periodicals, pamphlets and letters, manuscripts, notebooks and ephemera. Also obscure data, eyewitness reports, documents, photos, snapshots, press cuttings, diaries, biographies of seemingly unimportant people etc.,

Q. How does it differ from something like Wikipedia?

A. Much of the material is too minor and outside of the scope of an encyclopaedia. It is more about the preservation and curation of documents and ephemera; much of the information is beneath the Wikipedia radar (not notable enough) - it is closer to material referenced in their numbered footnotes …or the kind of information on which an encyclopaedic entry is based, part of the infrastructure... Jot101 is nearer to a mix of YouTube and the Victorian journal Notes and Queries in the way that people simply upload or record things they have found which are then in categories and searchable. The spirit of Notes and Queries is relentless curiosity and thirst for knowledge - however abstruse.

Q. Have you considered building a website and attracting contributions?

We already have a few contributors. We envision, in this century, a site where people seamlessly upload new information that they have found without having to create a website or a blog. Also where it is automatically codified along the lines of (say) the great Melvil Dewey and available for all eternity.

Remind me -what is a jot?

A jot is a piece of information. It is usually original and adds to our knowledge of the subject. Examples below:

The Terry-Thomas explanation.

Using the much loved gap-toothed British comedy actor Terry-Thomas as an example we show what is, and what is not, a jot.

Terry-Thomas's favourite drink was champagne. My father had a bar in Majorca and in the early 1960s Terry-Thomas holidayed there. He claims that T-T met Belinda Cunningham his third wife in his bar.It was called El Garito and catered for a louche Bohemian crowd. Terry-Thomas always called for champagne.

YES. Slight, but new information.

Terry-Thomas with his gap toothed smile and permanent cigarette holder always reminds me of my Uncle Derek who was thrown out of the Army in 1955 for stealing the mess takings. He was a 'bounder' too!

NO. Irrelevant information, adds nothing.

Terry-Thomas who everybody thought was such a 'bounder' and so terribly funny never made me or anyone in my family laugh. I think he was pretty lame.

NO. Opinion, and no new information. Also hard to believe...

I met a guy who had worked on a movie with Terry-Thomas. It was being shot in one of the hardest parts of Glasgow and after filming T-T insisted on dragging him and the crew to an exceptionally thuggish hardcore pub. T-T was in fine form, loud and posh and full of the joys of life and celebrity. He didn't change his style one iota for the local hard nuts. The guy thought there would almost certainly be a punch up but strangely the locals thought he was great and admired him for being exactly who he was and not changing his style.

YES. Good story, hopefully true and new information. A few more facts like the date, the name of the movie and the name of the pub would be even better.

So a jot adds new and original information, it is not irrelevant and it is not opinion. Every single posting on jot101 is a jot.